*BSD News Article 89068


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From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: Why no addusr?
Date: 14 Feb 1997 18:26:31 -0500
Organization: Panix
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <5e2sb7$62a@panix2.panix.com>
References: <none-ya023480001912962244220001@news.infi.net> <DERAADT.97Feb10191845@zeus.theos.com> <5dtc0g$hd0@cynic.portal.ca> <1997Feb14.090136@screwem.citi.umich.edu>
Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix2.panix.com
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:5354

In article <1997Feb14.090136@screwem.citi.umich.edu>,
peter honeyman <honey@citi.umich.edu> wrote:
>Curt Sampson writes:
>  
>  So congratulations, you've managed to drive away yet another possible
>  OpenBSD developer, both through your direct actions and your group's
>  frequent attacks on NetBSD.
>
>so where does that leave you?  at citi, we used netbsd for quite some
>time, but got sick and tired of patching the bug fixes we submitted to
>the netbsd core into release after release.  that sucks.

You submitted these as PRs?

We made a major effort to close PRs after the 1.2 release.  This effort
continues.  If you've submitted a PR that you felt was ignored, let me
know and I'll go do something about it.

I don't think there's any particular reason (I do not speak for The NetBSD
Foundation) why some CITI people couldn't be given access to the source
tree to apply such patches themselves.  Did you ever consider asking?

>theo may never get elected to public office, but at least he recognizes
>a bug fix when he sees it.

As do we.  When you have a PR database the size of NetBSD's, however, it's
easy to get behind.  Starting from scratch is a significant advantage here;
you can do nothing but close PRs for a few weeks, *then* announce your
neato-keen operating system for public consumption.  We unfortunately
don't have that luxury.

>the fact is, openbsd dominates netbsd, and theo's "bad" attitude has a 
>lot to do with that.

I don't understand what you mean by "dominate" and in fact I suspect that
you're leaving it deliberately vague.  Certainly, OpenBSD crows about itself
quite a bit more than NetBSD does.  I don't think there are any plans to
change that.  Certainly, certain key people involved with OpenBSD make a point
of slagging NetBSD at almost every opportunity, in order to make OpenBSD
seem active, ubiquitous, and magical.  We generally try to avoid that type
ov behaviour.

We also maintain a rather different philosophy towards changes.  We don't
like halfway or architecturally dubious fixes -- note that I'm not indicating
that any filed by CITI people necessarily were such, but we do get plenty of
"fixes" like that, more than a few of which have made it into OpenBSD -- and
so depending upon what your point of view is, some things won't ever get
"fixed" in NetBSD, at least not the way the person submitting the PR
suggested, and some things that are "fixed" in OpenBSD aren't really fixed
at all.

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	                                          tls@panix.COM

 Stumbling drunk in the railyard looking for God: http://www.panix.com/~tls/